February 25, 2025 • 31 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Verie Show is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
President Trump's statement on Fort Knox and going there to
see the gold, I feel is much bigger than whether
the gold is there, only seven tons of gold the
grand scheme of things going to make as big a
difference as some might expect. But what he's doing is
(01:09):
bigger than gold. What he's doing is exposing the narrative,
a new way of thinking, to question everything. How do
you know the gold is it Fort Knox? I've heard
(01:30):
it said that all the gold in California is in
a bank, is in a bank in the middle of
Beverly Hills, in somebody else's name. Where is the gold?
Why don't we take for granted the gold is there.
This is how you build a movement which is bigger
than defeating Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell or John Cornan
or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. This is how you
(01:55):
make people think differently. Instead of telling them what to think,
you tell him how to think, to question everything. If
you study highly successful in what just happened, wouldn't it huh? Oh?
You got excited? Okay? If you study highly successful people
(02:16):
who change the world, steve jobs, who create things that
weren't even understood to be possible to exist. You find
that they question everything, everything, things that we take for granted.
They question everything. Elon Musk, nothing is Why is that?
(02:42):
Why don't we drive on this side of the road.
Why does it have to be the case that we
have to use water instead of this? Why does it
have to be What Trump is doing as the president
is the opposite of what every president before him has done.
What do they do? They say, Trust, be confident. It's
(03:03):
all going to be okay. We are the United States
of America. Everything will be okay. I'm here to tell you.
Rest easy. Don't worry about UFOs. Don't worry about the
gold it's there. Don't worry about how much money we're
printing and where it's going. We're America. We'll always be America.
(03:27):
Things will be fine. Don't worry about the shot the
experts say to take it. Trust the science. Don't worry
about the six feet the experts say. If we do that,
eventually you'll get to go back to your lives. Don't
worry about well, but that's not an engaged citizenry, democracy
(03:49):
or what we have. A democratic republic requires an engaged, questioning, skeptical,
if not altogether cynical citizenry. This is why, as part
of that pattern, he said, we're gonna open up the
JFK assassination. We're gonna ask questions because it's not healthy
(04:11):
in a republic that most people believe that one man
with one rifle shot JFK from the fifth floor of
the school book depository. We don't believe that to be true.
And rather than just make more movies and we kind
of all wink wink nod nod. Is that Denise Bell
(04:33):
on the line? Okay? Instead of wink wink, nod nod,
you know they're keeping secrets from us. He's saying, no,
we're gonna dig in. You should demand that we dig in.
And that makes it, you know. I see things in
(04:53):
writing and I hear things on shows where people sort
of enjoy letting things linger with these conspiracy theories without
much behind it necessarily, and I've always thought that was
a sort of a cheap way to get audience engagement,
and I've tried to resist it. I guess you can
decide how well I've done or have it, but I
(05:15):
do find this interesting, And by interesting I mean as
a euphemism, the secret Service agent who in the Zapruder
film leaped into the back you say leaped or left
you say, leaped, okay, onto the back of JFK's limo
after the President was shot by whom we don't know
has just died. H Here he is on Charlie Rose
(05:41):
Back in twenty thirteen, telling his story.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
When you first heard the shot, where were you.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And what did you do?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I was in the car immediately behind the presidential vehicle,
on the left hand side of the car, on a
running board in the front position, and we had just
turned down onto Elm Street from Houston, and we were
going a little bit so than we normally had been.
We were going maybe ten twelve miles an hour, and
I was scanning to the left. There were many people there,
(06:07):
but I was scanning to my left and straight ahead,
and I heard this explosive noise over my right shoulder,
and so I turned toward that noise. And when I
did that, my eyes went across the back of the
presidential car, and I saw the President react to that
first shot. He grabbed in his throat and then he
(06:28):
went to his left. Now, you have to understand he
had a back brace on it, so he couldn't go forward,
and he was sitting up against the right side of
the car, so we couldn't go to the right. He
could only go to his left. And when what was
the conversation with missus Kennedy after you got to the car?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
So really we almost didn't make it.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, I know I slipped at first because the driver
hit the accelerator and I had to take a couple
extra steps in order to get up there. We didn't
have any conversations per se in the car. She was
in a state of shock, but she did say that
about I have his brain? She said, oh, Jack, what
have they done? And then she said, Jack, Jack, I
love you. That's really all she said all the way
(07:08):
to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Everybody has their theory, and many people's theory is based
on simply what they heard some guys say, or what
book they read or whatever else. A lot of people
try to act like they came up with the theory
on their own, which they didn't. But that's okay. The
point is it is unhealthy to leave such things for
(07:37):
the public to wonder. Oh it makes for Oliver, it
helps Oliver Stone sell more movies. It helps guys that
go on the speaking circuit, helps sell more books. But
these sorts of things are extraordinarily unhealthy in a republic
because they erode the basis upon which our style of
(07:59):
government is built, and that is the trust of the public,
the power of government. In a democratic republic, the sole
power is the consent of the government. When the governed
no longer consent, you have, in one form or another,
quiet or violet revolution. And it's happened throughout history. The
(08:27):
Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Step there are going to be people who get angry
at me for saying this, and that's okay, because you're
not hearing what I'm saying, and I can't make you
hear it. I mean, I can't make you understand it it.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
There are times where people since World War Two it's
cost him a career, where they've pointed out a strategic
stroke of brilliance by Hitler in you know where he
invaded at a particular time, and they're not saying that
they would love Nazism to come to their shores. They're
(09:11):
simply assessing a battle the way you would. I don't
get mad when someone points out that Lincoln's direction to
Mead or to Ulysses s Grant was a stroke of brilliance.
(09:32):
Doesn't mean that I approve of it or I applaud it.
I can look back and say okay. In much the
same way if you're watching a sporting event and you
can't admit that you know Phil Simms goes twenty two
of twenty three in almost a perfect game for the Giants,
but you hate the Giants and you say, oh, he sucks. Well, okay,
(09:56):
we're lost. There is a TV show I'm not recommending it.
I'm commenting on it on Netflix called mo and it's
by and about a comedian from Houston named Mo Ahmer.
I didn't know of mo Amer before this. I knew
of his name, I know him. And the show is
(10:21):
about a sort of quirky Palestinian family who've ended up
in Houston. And I won't ruin the show. I'll just
give you the basics. Palestinian family who ended up in Houston.
And he ends up in a school where he learns
(10:44):
Spanish and becomes fluent, and he takes up with a
girl who is Hispanic, and she speaks about it. It's
not the best Spanish, but it's more Spanglish Spanish. And
she owns a maintenance a car maintenance shop, repair shop,
mechanic shop, I guess you'd say. And he's got a
(11:07):
brother who's slow. He's somewhere pretty far out there on
the autism scale, but it's perfect casting. He has a
mother who you know, everybody knows somebody who has the
mother who still has one footback on you. Her Palestinian birthplace,
and you know she's reading the news of the Palestinians daily.
(11:28):
She hates the Israelis, and so that adds to the
character there. He has been an asylum seeker for over
twenty years, so there's the constant he's under threat of
being deported. But where would he go because his argument
is I'm not really Palestinian citizen or anything of the like.
(11:52):
And I say all that to say this because my
wife asked me. She watched it with me, and she said,
does this show bother you? I said, no, it doesn't
bother me. Why won't it bother me? And she said, well,
I know you your position pretty clearly on immigration policies
related to Middle Easterners, particularly those leaving, particularly Palestinians, and
(12:20):
the overall effect on the ledger of people coming here,
and it paints a very rosy picture of Palestinians who
come here as the greatest people, and they're wonderful and
they all just want a homeland and nobody's engaged in
any tomfoolery, and but they've been wronged by these evil
and it's always white people that represent the government. And
(12:42):
I said no. I view every film as some sort
of form of advocacy, one way or another. And the
moment you don't understand that is the moment that you
get into trouble. Whether it be Bambi or most any
other thing, there is a degree of advocacy to everything.
Kathleen Kennedy, the Head of Disney, has been released. By
(13:05):
the way, Kathleen Kennedy is the one that South Park
did the episode where they have her at the board
meeting and every time somebody pitches a movie, she says, yeah,
and just make the character gay and a lesbian, make
the character a chick, lead character a chick and a lesbian,
(13:25):
and make it lame. Because that's what she's done to
every movie. She's every movie they do a remake of
every Marvel character or whatever else, and she just replaces
the lead character with a woman who's a lesbian, and
the movie's lame, and that's you know, she's banging on
the table that she insists on that on everything. She
orders a dish at the end, which is like a
clam linguini, and she's angry because she wanted a chick
(13:47):
in the clam Linguini who was lesbian and it wasn't
in the dish and that's who she is. But anyway,
but I want to make this point very clear, and
I want you to hear what I'm saying and what
I'm not say saying. This film, this TV show is
so well written, so incredibly well written, that it will
(14:12):
have the effect of changing the opinion of some people
toward Palestinians seeking asylum in this country, and perhaps of
some people toward those I say seeking asylum, those filing
an asylum planed. Is different, and that is the power
(14:36):
of film. And mo Amer has done that in a
way to really humanize and make these characters very sympathetic,
and that I have to step back and be in
awe of his ability to have done that. Michael Berry,
one of our great joys for many years was to
go over on North Maine on what is known as
(15:01):
the Delos Mortos, the Day of the Dead, which is
what Halloween is all about, honoring the dead, your relatives
who've gone before, and to load up at the bakery
on the sorts of things that we wouldn't get a
chance to eat at any point any other point during
(15:21):
the course of the year, and in our travels over
the years, we came across the owner of a bakery
known as El Bolo, which means the white boy, and
it's a it's like a slang term that would be
kind of what maybe Doctor Dre would have called eminem
(15:41):
if they were, you know, in El Barrio. So El
Boleo was started by a fellow named Kirk Michaelis, and
I got to know Kirk pretty well because Kirk had
an interest in promoting his daughters. He had three knock down,
drag out, gorgeous daughters who had a band by the
(16:09):
name of their last name. It's a Greek name, Michaelis.
It's michael I S m I c h A E
l I S Michaelis. And he would want to bounce
ideas different people they were talking to. So much of
that business is not how well you sing or how
well your songs are written. It's who you know. It's
(16:30):
who gives you entree into the right people, and who
has the right connection at this particular time and puts
right song in front of you and gets you the
right label. Deal. Well, Kirk was invested in his girls.
His girls wanted to be stars, and their mama and
their daddy wanted to help them be stars. And he
(16:51):
whatever I could do to help them, he wanted. And
I admired that about him as a father myself. So
the girls moved to Nashville, and he rented a house
for them there, and they lived there and continued writing.
They were good writers as well, very good performers. And
(17:12):
they had the looks. And you can't deny the importance
of the looks for a female country singer. Did you
see Ramon? Have you seen the video? If any of
you haven't, you can look it up. Cash Bettel's girlfriend,
who's a country singer in Nashville. She's on her way
to sing for the troops somewhere and they're in the
airport and somebody asked her to sing, and she grabs
(17:33):
the mic for you know, Terminal two where now you know,
are not Gate thirty eight were now and she sings
a national anthem, just not an easy song to sing anyway,
So the Girls of Michaelis I don't know what ended
up happening. He and I would keep up ten years ago,
(17:55):
amazing how these things were my dad a week ago today,
my dad turned eighty five. Well ten years ago at
the RCC we had a birthday party for my dad
and Kirk made the biggest birthday cake I've ever seen
in my life, by far, and it had three letters
(18:18):
on it Dad, and those letters were if I'm lying,
I'm dying. At least fourteen inches tall, maybe taller, and
they spanned the length of the cake. It took six
grown men to carry the cake in so that none
of it broke. We said that my dad was blown away.
(18:40):
I'll post a picture of it little well. Unfortunately this
story does not have a happy ending. It did provide
many happy memories. But I've just been informed that Kirk
mchales passed away. Kirk was a cancer survivor back then
ten years ago. In fact, he was almost completely deaf,
(19:00):
effect of which I was not aware when I first
met him, and he kept refusing by text to do
an interview with me, and I thought, this is, you know,
kind of hitting me in my pride. Here. Everybody wants
to be on the show. I did not want to
be on the show. That's all I got in life.
You should want to be on the show. Didn't want
to be on the show. He kept making what I
(19:21):
felt were dumb excuses. So at some point I'm with
him and we're touring the bakery and I said, hey, man,
what's up with you not coming on the show? And
he said, I'm almost completely deaf. I read your lips
and so I did you know kind of that Jackie
(19:41):
Chan thing where I said something but moved my lips
differently to see it. No, I didn't he uh? I said,
I had no idea. He said, yeah, he had had
whatever the cancer was. And and this is the effects
of chemo. Kimo's awful. It's for every one of you
out there who has gone through I'm if you're not
(20:01):
feeling it right now, not in an inappropriate way, but
I am giving you a big hug. That is hell
on the body and people. Some people will will develop
a condition for the rest of their lives. For Kirk,
it was almost a complete loss of his hearing, now.
Ten years ago, I would guess Kirk was at most fifty,
(20:22):
which would mean he's passed it at maybe sixty. He
could be into his sixties. He could even be younger
than that. But that was the reason he wouldn't come
on the show because can't hear, and he had been
through a cancer treatment before that it had really taken
his toll. So he kind of made reference to living
(20:43):
on borrow time. And there's a book called searching called
Chasing Daylight, Chasing Daylight, and at one point I had
bought about one hundred copies over the years, and I
would give him out, but I gave him out so
often that I ran out of him. It's hard to find,
but you can find. It's called Chasing Daylight. And it's
the story of a guy who was head of ernstin
(21:03):
Ernst or ernstin Winney or Hooper's in Libran or Arthur Anders,
one of those firms back when they were the Big eight.
And he was who was the international chairman of this
big accounting firm and he got a death sentence. He
just going in for his check up. He's off to
London the next day and he's going in for his
checkup and he gets a brain terminal brain cancer diagnosed
as six months to live, and he tells the lady,
(21:26):
you're crazy. So he cancels a trip for tomorrow and
goes and gets another scan, and he does he's got
a very advanced brain cancer. But he talks about those
last six months as being the gift he had the
gift of getting to spend a lot of time saying
goodbye to everybody in his life who had meant something
to him, and that most of us don't get that opportunity,
(21:49):
which is pretty interesting anyway. Kirk mchaelis built this business
elbo Leo. He's Tilman for Tita's cousin, but he built
business unrelated to Tillman. He built the business. I had
asked him. He had three locations at the time. He
(22:09):
had the one on Airline. I think that's Airline over
kind of North Heights, right near Spanish Flower. I love
that place, and you know, one of the things I
love about it. Don't judge me for this, don't do
not do it. One of the things I love about
that place is the Mariaccis. I don't want Mariacchi's. Most
of the time I got to go to San Anton
this week, and I'm like barely making it there and
(22:32):
back in time to still do the shows. And I'm
stopping at me Tierra, because I don't want to Mariochi's
most all the time, but I do want them sometimes. Anyway,
he built Elbelio at three locations and he was making
over twenty million dollars out of these little you would
have never guessed. And I said, man, Kirk gots a
lot of money, and he said, yeah, fifteen cents at
(22:54):
a time. And I sat there with him and watched
people check out fifteen cents, little BONDU say, fifteen cent,
little amazing rest in Pete Kirk, Peace Kirk, Michaelas you
were a.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Good friend, Captain some Ting Wong, Well some.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Ting must be right. You are listening to Michael Berry.
We don't talk enough about the animals. Yeah, it's a
good show today. We're just barely over halfing. I'm I'm
afraid we're gonna set the bar too high.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
This is just a damn good show today.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
It's the game.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Down and you allie.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Wait, could he go higher? Shut up?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Satisfied, he wag.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Jump. We're gonna lower down the quality for the rest
of the show. Just to balance it out. Say I'd
back at a bit if you will. I worked for
Ozarka during summer when I was in college, and I
went in and my job was to spray all the
roaches off. Because you know those little water containers that
(24:50):
people would have. You'd have the big five gallon tank
on the top, and the Ozarka man would bring it
to your office or you could even give it at
your home. Well, those metal it had a metal housing
that you would pull the cold and if you had
the more expensive you need to have the cold and
the hot. It had a heating element there. You could
get hot for your water or for your coffee or
(25:11):
your teeth. Well, when the lease was up, they would
bring the machine back and we'd put it back into circulation.
And the first thing would happen is you would go.
It would be put into a gas chamber, and they
would put the machines into a gas chamber, close the door,
you wear like a hazmat suit, and turn on the
(25:33):
machine and for some number of time, an hour or whatever,
you'd come back and you would remove the machine and
there would be roaches dead on the floor everywhere, but
a lot of them had stuck to the internal portion
of the housing, so then it would go from there
to the to the wash down the powerwash, and I
(25:56):
was stuck on that dude. Well, my first couple of
days were for the gas, but it was impossible to
move any faster. There I got the washdoody. And the
reason I got the job was I'm a pleaser. I
wanted to impress. I was a waiter at a restaurant
called Paul's All American Seafood downtown, and I was hustling
because I want to make a lot of money, and
(26:17):
the more you hustled, the more you'd get in tips.
And the owner was very impressed, or the general manager,
and he said, man, I'd like you to come to
work for me. How does twenty bucks an hour sound? Wait?
What guaranteed twenty bucks an hour? That was twenty million.
That's still decent money thirty years later, thirty three years later.
(26:40):
Imagine what that was back then. Yeah, but at time
and a half, if you want it, you go to thirty.
Are you serious? Dang, Yes, I'm in. And then there's
that scene in the movie you know, where you take
off your apron and you throw it at him. Come
out of here. You know what always goes through my head. Yeah,
(27:03):
but you still got to pick up your last paycheck.
Like these people that just throw their apron and walk out.
Do you go back and get your last paycheck? Because
you gotta go get your last paycheck anyway. So I
my first when they moved me over to that, he said, look,
these guys at work here, lazy. They do about ten
of these at night, because you got to wash it
(27:23):
down pretty good. You got to knock all the loose
paint off, and then you go from there. The next
prep station is to repaint it so it looks new,
but it ain't new. There's still dead roaches up in there,
but don't worry about that. And my first night, he said,
you know these guys they do ten twelve at night.
That's that's kind of what we expect of I bet
you could do twenty five. And I'm like, you think
(27:46):
I could do twenty five or do thirty? So I
did thirty two. Well, there were some old black guys
sitting in the kitchen. When I go in. It was
kind of like that first day of prison kind of
deal where I bumps into you and they hated me,
and they wouldn't talk to me, and they ridiculed the
meal my wife had made for me. And I was expecting,
(28:08):
you know, hey, they're probably not going to welcome me
in with open arms because I'm kind of the scab
that's been brought in from the outside. But I didn't
think it would be that bad. It wasn't horrible. It's just,
you know, I was eighteen nineteen years old and these
were old men, and one of them was kind enough
to explain to me that if you worked here for
very long, you wouldn't want to have to turn out
thirty two. You're in here busting ass, but you'll be
(28:29):
gone and we are stuck. We're gonna do about ten
or twelve a day, and that's all we're going to do.
So I want, I don't want the quality to be
so good that y'all expect that every day. Isaac writes
off subject. But I was at work at the post
office and a random thought popped into my brain. I
was thinking about when I was in elementary school and
we had Show and tell. I missed that, and I
(28:52):
miss taking naps on my little mat in class. Have
a great Dayzar, I will, because I love that email
Michael writes, zar I had a happy memory of one
of the funniest Asian trope comedy actors of the eighties
in the movie Sixteen Candles, the exchange student Long Duck Dong.
Every time anyone said his name, you heard of Gong.
(29:13):
He was one of my teenage heroes. Please play the
gong sound, King of Dame so Long Duck Dong. Never mind.
You know what you're doing a good job of lowering
the quality very your own point. Yes, Bobby Wrights, sud
(29:33):
Bang would also be a good name for a suicide bomber.
Good point, you think about it. Scotti writes, thank you
for talking about the money that Trey Harris contributed to
Governor Greg Grabbit. People are very familiar within the system
of the Cleveland ISD and their big bond. The district
(29:55):
built one elementary school in their previous bond and built
two elementary and one middle school and the current bond.
They also built a satellite service center down there. Because
it's seventeen miles one way from Colony Ridge to Cleveland,
the district depends no sorry, the district spends millions just
on transportation for Colony Ridge alone. Trey Harris does not
(30:16):
hide the fact it is rumored that he has Greg
Grabitt's cell phone number, that they are close. It's amazing
to me how quickly the governor threw Trey under the
bus the second this started getting heat. All the while
he had absolutely no problem taking all his money and
his phone calls over the years.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
That's Greg Gravit. That's who Greg Grabit is. I've said
this to you folks for years. Greg gravity is now
trying to act like he deserves the credit for the
Colony Ridge raid. Look, I could say this every day
and you would tire of it, and I try not to.
But I have contacts at every level of law enforcement
(30:59):
like you would belief, and I can assure you this
did not come from Greg Grabitt. And I can assure
you that what's going on at Cality Ridge was known
by the county, by the District Attorney's office, by the rangers,
by the DPS, by the DEA, by the FBI.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Every single one of them was aware, and there were
various people within those organizations calling it out as to
what was happening.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Greg Grabbitt was abundantly aware of what.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Was going on and chose to do nothing. Tzar what
on Earth is going on with Dan Crenshaw threatening to
kill Tucker Carlson. This thing's gone viral. Has he lost
his mind?
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Verie Show is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
President Trump's statement on Fort Knox and going there to
see the gold, I feel is much bigger than whether
the gold is there, only seven tons of gold the
grand scheme of things going to make as big a
difference as some might expect. But what he's doing is
(01:09):
bigger than gold. What he's doing is exposing the narrative,
a new way of thinking, to question everything. How do
you know the gold is it Fort Knox? I've heard
(01:30):
it said that all the gold in California is in
a bank, is in a bank in the middle of
Beverly Hills, in somebody else's name. Where is the gold?
Why don't we take for granted the gold is there.
This is how you build a movement which is bigger
than defeating Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell or John Cornan
or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. This is how you
(01:55):
make people think differently. Instead of telling them what to think,
you tell him how to think, to question everything. If
you study highly successful in what just happened, wouldn't it huh? Oh?
You got excited? Okay? If you study highly successful people
(02:16):
who change the world, steve jobs, who create things that
weren't even understood to be possible to exist. You find
that they question everything, everything, things that we take for granted.
They question everything. Elon Musk, nothing is Why is that?
(02:42):
Why don't we drive on this side of the road.
Why does it have to be the case that we
have to use water instead of this? Why does it
have to be What Trump is doing as the president
is the opposite of what every president before him has done.
What do they do? They say, Trust, be confident. It's
(03:03):
all going to be okay. We are the United States
of America. Everything will be okay. I'm here to tell you.
Rest easy. Don't worry about UFOs. Don't worry about the
gold it's there. Don't worry about how much money we're
printing and where it's going. We're America. We'll always be America.
(03:27):
Things will be fine. Don't worry about the shot the
experts say to take it. Trust the science. Don't worry
about the six feet the experts say. If we do that,
eventually you'll get to go back to your lives. Don't
worry about well, but that's not an engaged citizenry, democracy
(03:49):
or what we have. A democratic republic requires an engaged, questioning, skeptical,
if not altogether cynical citizenry. This is why, as part
of that pattern, he said, we're gonna open up the
JFK assassination. We're gonna ask questions because it's not healthy
(04:11):
in a republic that most people believe that one man
with one rifle shot JFK from the fifth floor of
the school book depository. We don't believe that to be true.
And rather than just make more movies and we kind
of all wink wink nod nod. Is that Denise Bell
(04:33):
on the line? Okay? Instead of wink wink, nod nod,
you know they're keeping secrets from us. He's saying, no,
we're gonna dig in. You should demand that we dig in.
And that makes it, you know. I see things in
(04:53):
writing and I hear things on shows where people sort
of enjoy letting things linger with these conspiracy theories without
much behind it necessarily, and I've always thought that was
a sort of a cheap way to get audience engagement,
and I've tried to resist it. I guess you can
decide how well I've done or have it, but I
(05:15):
do find this interesting, And by interesting I mean as
a euphemism, the secret Service agent who in the Zapruder
film leaped into the back you say leaped or left
you say, leaped, okay, onto the back of JFK's limo
after the President was shot by whom we don't know
has just died. H Here he is on Charlie Rose
(05:41):
Back in twenty thirteen, telling his story.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
When you first heard the shot, where were you.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And what did you do?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I was in the car immediately behind the presidential vehicle,
on the left hand side of the car, on a
running board in the front position, and we had just
turned down onto Elm Street from Houston, and we were
going a little bit so than we normally had been.
We were going maybe ten twelve miles an hour, and
I was scanning to the left. There were many people there,
(06:07):
but I was scanning to my left and straight ahead,
and I heard this explosive noise over my right shoulder,
and so I turned toward that noise. And when I
did that, my eyes went across the back of the
presidential car, and I saw the President react to that
first shot. He grabbed in his throat and then he
(06:28):
went to his left. Now, you have to understand he
had a back brace on it, so he couldn't go forward,
and he was sitting up against the right side of
the car, so we couldn't go to the right. He
could only go to his left. And when what was
the conversation with missus Kennedy after you got to the car?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
So really we almost didn't make it.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, I know I slipped at first because the driver
hit the accelerator and I had to take a couple
extra steps in order to get up there. We didn't
have any conversations per se in the car. She was
in a state of shock, but she did say that
about I have his brain? She said, oh, Jack, what
have they done? And then she said, Jack, Jack, I
love you. That's really all she said all the way
(07:08):
to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Everybody has their theory, and many people's theory is based
on simply what they heard some guys say, or what
book they read or whatever else. A lot of people
try to act like they came up with the theory
on their own, which they didn't. But that's okay. The
point is it is unhealthy to leave such things for
(07:37):
the public to wonder. Oh it makes for Oliver, it
helps Oliver Stone sell more movies. It helps guys that
go on the speaking circuit, helps sell more books. But
these sorts of things are extraordinarily unhealthy in a republic
because they erode the basis upon which our style of
(07:59):
government is built, and that is the trust of the public,
the power of government. In a democratic republic, the sole
power is the consent of the government. When the governed
no longer consent, you have, in one form or another,
quiet or violet revolution. And it's happened throughout history. The
(08:27):
Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Step there are going to be people who get angry
at me for saying this, and that's okay, because you're
not hearing what I'm saying, and I can't make you
hear it. I mean, I can't make you understand it it.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
There are times where people since World War Two it's
cost him a career, where they've pointed out a strategic
stroke of brilliance by Hitler in you know where he
invaded at a particular time, and they're not saying that
they would love Nazism to come to their shores. They're
(09:11):
simply assessing a battle the way you would. I don't
get mad when someone points out that Lincoln's direction to
Mead or to Ulysses s Grant was a stroke of brilliance.
(09:32):
Doesn't mean that I approve of it or I applaud it.
I can look back and say okay. In much the
same way if you're watching a sporting event and you
can't admit that you know Phil Simms goes twenty two
of twenty three in almost a perfect game for the Giants,
but you hate the Giants and you say, oh, he sucks. Well, okay,
(09:56):
we're lost. There is a TV show I'm not recommending it.
I'm commenting on it on Netflix called mo and it's
by and about a comedian from Houston named Mo Ahmer.
I didn't know of mo Amer before this. I knew
of his name, I know him. And the show is
(10:21):
about a sort of quirky Palestinian family who've ended up
in Houston. And I won't ruin the show. I'll just
give you the basics. Palestinian family who ended up in Houston.
And he ends up in a school where he learns
(10:44):
Spanish and becomes fluent, and he takes up with a
girl who is Hispanic, and she speaks about it. It's
not the best Spanish, but it's more Spanglish Spanish. And
she owns a maintenance a car maintenance shop, repair shop,
mechanic shop, I guess you'd say. And he's got a
(11:07):
brother who's slow. He's somewhere pretty far out there on
the autism scale, but it's perfect casting. He has a
mother who you know, everybody knows somebody who has the
mother who still has one footback on you. Her Palestinian birthplace,
and you know she's reading the news of the Palestinians daily.
(11:28):
She hates the Israelis, and so that adds to the
character there. He has been an asylum seeker for over
twenty years, so there's the constant he's under threat of
being deported. But where would he go because his argument
is I'm not really Palestinian citizen or anything of the like.
(11:52):
And I say all that to say this because my
wife asked me. She watched it with me, and she said,
does this show bother you? I said, no, it doesn't
bother me. Why won't it bother me? And she said, well,
I know you your position pretty clearly on immigration policies
related to Middle Easterners, particularly those leaving, particularly Palestinians, and
(12:20):
the overall effect on the ledger of people coming here,
and it paints a very rosy picture of Palestinians who
come here as the greatest people, and they're wonderful and
they all just want a homeland and nobody's engaged in
any tomfoolery, and but they've been wronged by these evil
and it's always white people that represent the government. And
(12:42):
I said no. I view every film as some sort
of form of advocacy, one way or another. And the
moment you don't understand that is the moment that you
get into trouble. Whether it be Bambi or most any
other thing, there is a degree of advocacy to everything.
Kathleen Kennedy, the Head of Disney, has been released. By
(13:05):
the way, Kathleen Kennedy is the one that South Park
did the episode where they have her at the board
meeting and every time somebody pitches a movie, she says, yeah,
and just make the character gay and a lesbian, make
the character a chick, lead character a chick and a lesbian,
(13:25):
and make it lame. Because that's what she's done to
every movie. She's every movie they do a remake of
every Marvel character or whatever else, and she just replaces
the lead character with a woman who's a lesbian, and
the movie's lame, and that's you know, she's banging on
the table that she insists on that on everything. She
orders a dish at the end, which is like a
clam linguini, and she's angry because she wanted a chick
(13:47):
in the clam Linguini who was lesbian and it wasn't
in the dish and that's who she is. But anyway,
but I want to make this point very clear, and
I want you to hear what I'm saying and what
I'm not say saying. This film, this TV show is
so well written, so incredibly well written, that it will
(14:12):
have the effect of changing the opinion of some people
toward Palestinians seeking asylum in this country, and perhaps of
some people toward those I say seeking asylum, those filing
an asylum planed. Is different, and that is the power
(14:36):
of film. And mo Amer has done that in a
way to really humanize and make these characters very sympathetic,
and that I have to step back and be in
awe of his ability to have done that. Michael Berry,
one of our great joys for many years was to
go over on North Maine on what is known as
(15:01):
the Delos Mortos, the Day of the Dead, which is
what Halloween is all about, honoring the dead, your relatives
who've gone before, and to load up at the bakery
on the sorts of things that we wouldn't get a
chance to eat at any point any other point during
(15:21):
the course of the year, and in our travels over
the years, we came across the owner of a bakery
known as El Bolo, which means the white boy, and
it's a it's like a slang term that would be
kind of what maybe Doctor Dre would have called eminem
(15:41):
if they were, you know, in El Barrio. So El
Boleo was started by a fellow named Kirk Michaelis, and
I got to know Kirk pretty well because Kirk had
an interest in promoting his daughters. He had three knock down,
drag out, gorgeous daughters who had a band by the
(16:09):
name of their last name. It's a Greek name, Michaelis.
It's michael I S m I c h A E
l I S Michaelis. And he would want to bounce
ideas different people they were talking to. So much of
that business is not how well you sing or how
well your songs are written. It's who you know. It's
(16:30):
who gives you entree into the right people, and who
has the right connection at this particular time and puts
right song in front of you and gets you the
right label. Deal. Well, Kirk was invested in his girls.
His girls wanted to be stars, and their mama and
their daddy wanted to help them be stars. And he
(16:51):
whatever I could do to help them, he wanted. And
I admired that about him as a father myself. So
the girls moved to Nashville, and he rented a house
for them there, and they lived there and continued writing.
They were good writers as well, very good performers. And
(17:12):
they had the looks. And you can't deny the importance
of the looks for a female country singer. Did you
see Ramon? Have you seen the video? If any of
you haven't, you can look it up. Cash Bettel's girlfriend,
who's a country singer in Nashville. She's on her way
to sing for the troops somewhere and they're in the
airport and somebody asked her to sing, and she grabs
(17:33):
the mic for you know, Terminal two where now you know,
are not Gate thirty eight were now and she sings
a national anthem, just not an easy song to sing anyway,
So the Girls of Michaelis I don't know what ended
up happening. He and I would keep up ten years ago,
(17:55):
amazing how these things were my dad a week ago today,
my dad turned eighty five. Well ten years ago at
the RCC we had a birthday party for my dad
and Kirk made the biggest birthday cake I've ever seen
in my life, by far, and it had three letters
(18:18):
on it Dad, and those letters were if I'm lying,
I'm dying. At least fourteen inches tall, maybe taller, and
they spanned the length of the cake. It took six
grown men to carry the cake in so that none
of it broke. We said that my dad was blown away.
(18:40):
I'll post a picture of it little well. Unfortunately this
story does not have a happy ending. It did provide
many happy memories. But I've just been informed that Kirk
mchales passed away. Kirk was a cancer survivor back then
ten years ago. In fact, he was almost completely deaf,
(19:00):
effect of which I was not aware when I first
met him, and he kept refusing by text to do
an interview with me, and I thought, this is, you know,
kind of hitting me in my pride. Here. Everybody wants
to be on the show. I did not want to
be on the show. That's all I got in life.
You should want to be on the show. Didn't want
to be on the show. He kept making what I
(19:21):
felt were dumb excuses. So at some point I'm with
him and we're touring the bakery and I said, hey, man,
what's up with you not coming on the show? And
he said, I'm almost completely deaf. I read your lips
and so I did you know kind of that Jackie
(19:41):
Chan thing where I said something but moved my lips
differently to see it. No, I didn't he uh? I said,
I had no idea. He said, yeah, he had had
whatever the cancer was. And and this is the effects
of chemo. Kimo's awful. It's for every one of you
out there who has gone through I'm if you're not
(20:01):
feeling it right now, not in an inappropriate way, but
I am giving you a big hug. That is hell
on the body and people. Some people will will develop
a condition for the rest of their lives. For Kirk,
it was almost a complete loss of his hearing, now.
Ten years ago, I would guess Kirk was at most fifty,
(20:22):
which would mean he's passed it at maybe sixty. He
could be into his sixties. He could even be younger
than that. But that was the reason he wouldn't come
on the show because can't hear, and he had been
through a cancer treatment before that it had really taken
his toll. So he kind of made reference to living
(20:43):
on borrow time. And there's a book called searching called
Chasing Daylight, Chasing Daylight, and at one point I had
bought about one hundred copies over the years, and I
would give him out, but I gave him out so
often that I ran out of him. It's hard to find,
but you can find. It's called Chasing Daylight. And it's
the story of a guy who was head of ernstin
(21:03):
Ernst or ernstin Winney or Hooper's in Libran or Arthur Anders,
one of those firms back when they were the Big eight.
And he was who was the international chairman of this
big accounting firm and he got a death sentence. He
just going in for his check up. He's off to
London the next day and he's going in for his
checkup and he gets a brain terminal brain cancer diagnosed
as six months to live, and he tells the lady,
(21:26):
you're crazy. So he cancels a trip for tomorrow and
goes and gets another scan, and he does he's got
a very advanced brain cancer. But he talks about those
last six months as being the gift he had the
gift of getting to spend a lot of time saying
goodbye to everybody in his life who had meant something
to him, and that most of us don't get that opportunity,
(21:49):
which is pretty interesting anyway. Kirk mchaelis built this business
elbo Leo. He's Tilman for Tita's cousin, but he built
business unrelated to Tillman. He built the business. I had
asked him. He had three locations at the time. He
(22:09):
had the one on Airline. I think that's Airline over
kind of North Heights, right near Spanish Flower. I love
that place, and you know, one of the things I
love about it. Don't judge me for this, don't do
not do it. One of the things I love about
that place is the Mariaccis. I don't want Mariacchi's. Most
of the time I got to go to San Anton
this week, and I'm like barely making it there and
(22:32):
back in time to still do the shows. And I'm
stopping at me Tierra, because I don't want to Mariochi's
most all the time, but I do want them sometimes. Anyway,
he built Elbelio at three locations and he was making
over twenty million dollars out of these little you would
have never guessed. And I said, man, Kirk gots a
lot of money, and he said, yeah, fifteen cents at
(22:54):
a time. And I sat there with him and watched
people check out fifteen cents, little BONDU say, fifteen cent,
little amazing rest in Pete Kirk, Peace Kirk, Michaelas you
were a.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Good friend, Captain some Ting Wong, Well some.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Ting must be right. You are listening to Michael Berry.
We don't talk enough about the animals. Yeah, it's a
good show today. We're just barely over halfing. I'm I'm
afraid we're gonna set the bar too high.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
This is just a damn good show today.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
It's the game.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Down and you allie.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Wait, could he go higher? Shut up?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Satisfied, he wag.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Jump. We're gonna lower down the quality for the rest
of the show. Just to balance it out. Say I'd
back at a bit if you will. I worked for
Ozarka during summer when I was in college, and I
went in and my job was to spray all the
roaches off. Because you know those little water containers that
(24:50):
people would have. You'd have the big five gallon tank
on the top, and the Ozarka man would bring it
to your office or you could even give it at
your home. Well, those metal it had a metal housing
that you would pull the cold and if you had
the more expensive you need to have the cold and
the hot. It had a heating element there. You could
get hot for your water or for your coffee or
(25:11):
your teeth. Well, when the lease was up, they would
bring the machine back and we'd put it back into circulation.
And the first thing would happen is you would go.
It would be put into a gas chamber, and they
would put the machines into a gas chamber, close the door,
you wear like a hazmat suit, and turn on the
(25:33):
machine and for some number of time, an hour or whatever,
you'd come back and you would remove the machine and
there would be roaches dead on the floor everywhere, but
a lot of them had stuck to the internal portion
of the housing, so then it would go from there
to the to the wash down the powerwash, and I
(25:56):
was stuck on that dude. Well, my first couple of
days were for the gas, but it was impossible to
move any faster. There I got the washdoody. And the
reason I got the job was I'm a pleaser. I
wanted to impress. I was a waiter at a restaurant
called Paul's All American Seafood downtown, and I was hustling
because I want to make a lot of money, and
(26:17):
the more you hustled, the more you'd get in tips.
And the owner was very impressed, or the general manager,
and he said, man, I'd like you to come to
work for me. How does twenty bucks an hour sound? Wait?
What guaranteed twenty bucks an hour? That was twenty million.
That's still decent money thirty years later, thirty three years later.
(26:40):
Imagine what that was back then. Yeah, but at time
and a half, if you want it, you go to thirty.
Are you serious? Dang, Yes, I'm in. And then there's
that scene in the movie you know, where you take
off your apron and you throw it at him. Come
out of here. You know what always goes through my head. Yeah,
(27:03):
but you still got to pick up your last paycheck.
Like these people that just throw their apron and walk out.
Do you go back and get your last paycheck? Because
you gotta go get your last paycheck anyway. So I
my first when they moved me over to that, he said, look,
these guys at work here, lazy. They do about ten
of these at night, because you got to wash it
(27:23):
down pretty good. You got to knock all the loose
paint off, and then you go from there. The next
prep station is to repaint it so it looks new,
but it ain't new. There's still dead roaches up in there,
but don't worry about that. And my first night, he said,
you know these guys they do ten twelve at night.
That's that's kind of what we expect of I bet
you could do twenty five. And I'm like, you think
(27:46):
I could do twenty five or do thirty? So I
did thirty two. Well, there were some old black guys
sitting in the kitchen. When I go in. It was
kind of like that first day of prison kind of
deal where I bumps into you and they hated me,
and they wouldn't talk to me, and they ridiculed the
meal my wife had made for me. And I was expecting,
(28:08):
you know, hey, they're probably not going to welcome me
in with open arms because I'm kind of the scab
that's been brought in from the outside. But I didn't
think it would be that bad. It wasn't horrible. It's just,
you know, I was eighteen nineteen years old and these
were old men, and one of them was kind enough
to explain to me that if you worked here for
very long, you wouldn't want to have to turn out
thirty two. You're in here busting ass, but you'll be
(28:29):
gone and we are stuck. We're gonna do about ten
or twelve a day, and that's all we're going to do.
So I want, I don't want the quality to be
so good that y'all expect that every day. Isaac writes
off subject. But I was at work at the post
office and a random thought popped into my brain. I
was thinking about when I was in elementary school and
we had Show and tell. I missed that, and I
(28:52):
miss taking naps on my little mat in class. Have
a great Dayzar, I will, because I love that email
Michael writes, zar I had a happy memory of one
of the funniest Asian trope comedy actors of the eighties
in the movie Sixteen Candles, the exchange student Long Duck Dong.
Every time anyone said his name, you heard of Gong.
(29:13):
He was one of my teenage heroes. Please play the
gong sound, King of Dame so Long Duck Dong. Never mind.
You know what you're doing a good job of lowering
the quality very your own point. Yes, Bobby Wrights, sud
(29:33):
Bang would also be a good name for a suicide bomber.
Good point, you think about it. Scotti writes, thank you
for talking about the money that Trey Harris contributed to
Governor Greg Grabbit. People are very familiar within the system
of the Cleveland ISD and their big bond. The district
(29:55):
built one elementary school in their previous bond and built
two elementary and one middle school and the current bond.
They also built a satellite service center down there. Because
it's seventeen miles one way from Colony Ridge to Cleveland,
the district depends no sorry, the district spends millions just
on transportation for Colony Ridge alone. Trey Harris does not
(30:16):
hide the fact it is rumored that he has Greg
Grabitt's cell phone number, that they are close. It's amazing
to me how quickly the governor threw Trey under the
bus the second this started getting heat. All the while
he had absolutely no problem taking all his money and
his phone calls over the years.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
That's Greg Gravit. That's who Greg Grabit is. I've said
this to you folks for years. Greg gravity is now
trying to act like he deserves the credit for the
Colony Ridge raid. Look, I could say this every day
and you would tire of it, and I try not to.
But I have contacts at every level of law enforcement
(30:59):
like you would belief, and I can assure you this
did not come from Greg Grabitt. And I can assure
you that what's going on at Cality Ridge was known
by the county, by the District Attorney's office, by the rangers,
by the DPS, by the DEA, by the FBI.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Every single one of them was aware, and there were
various people within those organizations calling it out as to
what was happening.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Greg Grabbitt was abundantly aware of what.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Was going on and chose to do nothing. Tzar what
on Earth is going on with Dan Crenshaw threatening to
kill Tucker Carlson. This thing's gone viral. Has he lost
his mind?
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